Enter the mind of a suddenly single 40-something year old woman and mother as she navigates the world. Join her as she faces her fears, manages her emotions, juggles responsibilities and contemplates the dating scene. But more than anything else, she’s finding out who she is and what she’s capable of.

Tuesday, 19 April 2016

The Netflix Notion

Those who
know me well or have been following this blog will be aware of my love of all
things orderly. I like plans, schedules, to-do-lists and wherever possible I
colour code. It makes me happy.

However,
this often leaves me in a bit of a pickle. As a single mum, I have no one at
home with whom to share the domestic chores, not that they were shared in my
previous life but that’s a different story. Plus, as I’m now a working mum
things are a lot more hectic than they used to be. So, my to-do-list is fairly
extensive.

But the
thing that begins to cause a problem is that I plan to fit more in a day than
is humanly possible. This is not the realm of the single, merely the
overoptimistic. I constantly underestimate how long a task will take and
overestimate how much time I have. For example, I constantly forget to build in
time to eat meals, go to the loo and answer the phone when it rings. How dare
people interrupt my plans in such a fashion?!

I certainly
never ever choose to schedule time for nice things like sitting down with a cup
of coffee, reading a magazine or the essential task of doing nothing (see
Lessons From A Health Spa).

As a result,
I fail on a daily basis. Sometimes I manage to fail on an hourly basis. It’s
exhausting.

Not only is
it depressing to have a half ticked list, I then shunt all the outstanding
tasks into the next day meaning I start each morning looking at a list of jobs
I should really have already done. Cue an even lower mood.

The problem,
as I’m sure you can see, then builds and builds. My process each day becomes…

1. Look at
the list and feel down
at how long it is

2. Feel
annoyed at the things I should have done yesterday

3. Feel
anxious that if I couldn’t do them yesterday I’m unlikely to be able to fit
them in today either

4. Look at a
job, such as the ironing, and know I won’t get it finished in the time planned
so ditch it and scour the list for something more achievable

5. Start a
job with rising angst, which makes me less efficient and even slower than usual

6.
Eventually complete the task and realise the list will not get finished

7.
Re-allocate excess items, including the ironing, to other days

8. Repeat
steps 5 to 7 until noting I’m late for the school run

9. Arrive
last at school pick up without a snack for the kids

10. Go home
and do more jobs

11. Berate
myself for failing to achieve

12.
Completely fail to notice how much time all the planning and re-planning has
taken.

The above is
not a useful format for a successful life – being happy, relaxed and getting
stuff done.

So, I’ve
found a new way of doing things. I call it the Netflix Notion.

When the
kids have gone to bed in the evenings, I’ve recently found myself
enjoying the delights of Netflix. I’ve gone from Orange Is The New Black through
White Collar and am now relishing the rather unexpected crush I have on Hugh
Laurie, playing the lead in House. Wow! Who’d have thought it? I’m told I
should also watch him in BBC’s The Night Manager but it’s disappeared from
iPlayer so I’ll have to track that down another time.

Anyway, I
should warn you that the joy of such a TV drama can sometimes become a bit of
an obsession. It’s the danger of having full box set, series “on demand” or
Netflix available to you. Binge watching. You watch one episode but then get
caught up in the story and decide to watch just one more before going to sleep.
But then the cliffhanger is so good you have to see the next one too. And then
you don’t get to sleep until 1am! Perhaps that’s just me.

Anyway, I
noticed that each episode is 45 minutes long. It goes really quickly but tells
an entire independent story as well as developing the overall plotline leaving
you gagging for the next installment… and another moment with House! So I
decided to bring into play the Netflix Notion.

Last night,
I stood in my kitchen and tackled the ironing pile. It had got to crisis point
as we no longer had any clean-ironed clothes to wear and action needed to be
taken.

But rather
than look at it thinking “this is going to take me hours and I’ll never finish
it and I hate it and I’d rather sit down and I’ll just do it tomorrow even
though I’ll hate the sight of the un-ironed pile of clothes when I get up in
the morning…” I changed by internal dialogue.

Instead, I
chose to iron for one episode, and one episode only, of House on Netflix. Just
45 minutes. Then I would go to bed.

But after
one episode, I couldn’t stop. How could I switch off not knowing whether House
was going to… I won’t spoil the plot line for you. Watch it!

So I watched
another, then another and I finished the ironing. I told you there was a lot
there! I was ridiculously, proudly, ecstatically, happy. Sadly, things weren’t
going quite so well for House but, again, you’ll just have to see for yourself
why.

Anyway, I
went to bed, slept better than I have for days and came down to lots of piles
of neatly ironed clothes this morning. I smiled, and then thought to myself
“what shall I spend 45 minutes doing this morning?”

I didn’t put
the TV on, that really would be obsessive. But I decided to give myself 45-minute
segments to achieve whatever I could achieve.

So this
morning, I’m writing my blog. Regular readers will probably have noticed this
post and the previous one were a little behind my usual schedule. That’s
because I couldn’t find time to write it and knew how long it took to create,
rewrite, edit, find pictures, add hyperlinks and upload. But today, I’m doing things
differently. I’m writing for 45 minutes.

If I can’t
write my post in 45 minutes then maybe it really isn’t something that fits into
my life right now. And that’s where I’d got to. I felt the same about going
running, swimming, to the gym, painting my nails, filling and enjoying a
relaxing bath. I spent hours not succeeding at doing the chores and deciding
that there was absolutely no way I could fit in any of the nice stuff either.

Again, not a
model for a happy successful life.

So here I
am, having written for 45 minutes. I CAN get things done in that time when I
get on with them and stop stressing or trying to do them perfectly. I didn’t
panic about my word count, keep jumping up to do other more urgent tasks and I
even ignored the phone ringing, something that doesn’t come naturally to me.
But this was my time to do what I’d set out to do and I didn’t have to allow
someone outside to intrude on that. First draft done, and as I’m here I might
as well do the edit and find the photo too!

Now that I’ve
succeeded twice, with the ironing and writing, I know I can do it with
anything. So it’s time to give myself permission to do something nice! I’m off
to pour myself a cup of coffee and sit down for a bit of “doing nothing” time
to let my brain wander. And be happy.

Trust in the
Netflix Notion. It’s a rubbish name but my 45 minutes are up so I’m moving on!

What a fantastic idea! 45 minutes sounds like the perfect time. I'm a bit like you for making a huge long to do list which feels satisfying, yet also leaves me panicking that I can't get it all done. I do try and alternate tasks between ones that aren't so bad and ones that I really don't like, which helps me to get through them.

Thanks Jennifer. Great idea alternating tasks between the rubbish ones and the not so rubbish ones. Don't forget to slip some treats in there too! We need to make time for cake... for our sanity, obviously. Right, I'm off for a chocolate chip brownie! Love SPB xxx

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Single Plus Baggage

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As I entered my 40s I thought I had it all. Supportive husband, great kids, lovely home, nice car, foreign holidays, a respectable wardrobe of clothes, the lot. And I was quite content. Not unrealistically ‘only in the movies’ type of happy, but I was ticking along nicely. Then my husband left and my world changed.

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As I started to rebuild my life, I began noticing those around me whose husbands had left or died. As different as each of our circumstances are, we have several things in common. We are all starting over, later in life, trying to work out who we are, where we fit into the world and wondering if we’ll ever find love again. But, unlike when we were in our 20s, we’re doing all that whilst juggling homes, kids, pets, jobs and aging relatives not to mention riding the crazy emotional rollercoaster that losing your long-term partner hurls you onto. We are Single Plus Baggage.

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